Despite Bad Religion, ‘The Gates’ Is Surprisingly Thoughtful Regarding Abuse
(REVIEW) The horror genre has long been intertwined with religion, both positively and negatively.
Whether it’s “The Exorcist” and “The Conjuring” portraying faith as a weapon against evil, or “Carrie” and “Midnight Mass” framing it as the source. This is probably because faith and horror are both centered around what you can’t see. This makes horror a natural place to wrestle with what’s scary–but also hopeful–about whatever exists beyond our known world.
“The Gates” follows in the tradition of “bad religion” horror movies by exploring our fears of racially exclusive modern religious megachurch cults. Its biggest strength is how thoughtfully it taps into specifically modern expressions of those evergreen fears. Its biggest weakness is conflating disparate trends in ways that create more confusion than clarity.
READ: Faith And The Oscars: What Happened To Hollywood’s Great Religious Films?
“The Gates” follows three college students: Derek, Kevin, and Tyon (played by Mason Gooding, Algee Smith and Keith Powers, respectively) on a road trip gone wrong, as the three young men take an ill-advised shortcut through a remote gated community. They eventually find themselves trapped behind the walls after witnessing a murder. Over the course of the night, they are blamed, hunted and fractured by their own differing belief systems, while the perpetrator, Pastor Jacob (played by the now-late James Van Der Beek), emerges as the cunning patriarch who holds the entire community under his influence.
The movie has all the beats you want: Likeable characters, a clear villain, good pacing, decent scares and a clear social fear it’s tapping into. It also has the typical horror contrivances where characters have to be extremely obtuse or be insanely unlucky to keep them from getting out of the situation almost immediately.
But the film also has elements that surprisingly elevate it beyond typical genre fare. The acting is particularly strong from Mason Gooding as Derek. He’s a convincing everyman trying to play by the rules, but he never comes across as naive. He gives a thoughtful performance as a do-gooder trying to live by his values. James Van Der Beek, who tragically died just before the film’s release, manages to both ham up his evil pastor performance while also bringing real sincerity to the role.
Yes, sometimes the characters feel more like mouthpieces for the film’s “message” than saying things that people would actually say. (Watching Derek and Kevin monologue at each other about whether black people should “play the game” or if the system is irredimably rigged is as on the nose as it gets.)
The film obviously focuses on the typical racial and class anxiety of its genre. But it also thoughtfully highlights fears of powerful preachers abusing their congregations and covering it up in ways that are unusually contemporary and insightful.
Instead of having the villain be yet another Catholic priest, the bad guy is a non-denominational pastor who builds his community around a cult of personality. When he describes why he’s so desperate to keep his scandal quiet, he explains how everyone today is so lost and divided, and he believes his church can unite and restore the community.
This dovetails with three very relevant faith conversations not frequently brought up in Hollywood films: How cover-up culture dovetails with lack of accountability in non-denominational settings, how culture war mentality poisons the culture, and how ow faith is presented as an alternative to the lack of community in our culture.
When people think of churches covering up abuse scandals, they think of strongly institutional churches like the Catholic church. But as non-denominational Christianity continues to be the fastest-growing version of Christianity in America today, more and more people are pointing out that these might be even worse.
These churches have no institutional oversight and therefore no accountability. Which means these churches are largely built around a single pastor’s cult of personality, giving them a lot more leeway for abuse. Christian leaders have long made this critique of non-denominational churches, including the late pastor Tim Keller, journalist Julie Royce and YouTuber Mike Winger.
Likewise, the film shows how these communities can overlap with a “culture war” mentality to keep their congregation in line. Pastor Jacobs warns his followers that they’ve created a safe-haven community against the world that’s after them. And if a scandal breaks out, then they won’t be safe anymore.
This view makes community members very susceptible to someone like Jacob. Experts of “affinity fraud” have noted that people in historically marginalized or persecuted communities – like Mormons, Jews, and African Americans – are some of the most likely to get scammed.
Why? Because they understandably create a shorthand that says “my people equal trustworthy” and “not my people is equal to untrustworthy.” But trustworthiness doesn’t fall on tribal lines.
Then there’s faith as an alternative to being “lost” and “divided” and “atomized individuals.” This aligns with what many modern social scientists say. People like Ryan Burge and Jonathan Haidt have noted that,religion appears to be the most effective way for people to build community across demographic — particularly political — lines.
But the film’s desire to combine so many social issues is also one of its biggest weaknesses. It tries to combine gated-community white supremacy with unaccountable conservative-coded non-denominational megachurch pastors.
But non-denominational Christianity is one of the most racially diverse religious groups in the US. The most homogeneous white denominations are mainline protestants, which are the least likely to be politically conservative in the coded way the movie portrays. (Lots of flags and guns) Meanwhile, the most racially diverse denominations are also the most likely to have voted for someone like Trump.
This makes the social commentary more tribal than insightful. The bad guys are people “over there.” They’re the people who look like this (a white male with no tattoos), talk like this (lots of religious language) and have these values (flags outside their homes). It creates a Frankenstein’s monster of everything that represents the “other tribe” — even though those dividing lines don’t line up against reality.
This weakens the film’s otherwise thoughtful ending message: don’t trust too much or too little authority figures with power. The conclusion finds Kevin saving the day by calling the cops for help. But Derek determines that he’ll talk to a lawyer before he talks to police detectives. This is actually a deeply Christian and deeply American principle: We need institutions like the church, like the government, but we also know that men are fallen, so we don’t want to imbue them with too much power or too little accountability.
It’s also worth noting that the film never answers Pastor Jacob’s challenge to the “lost” nature of the modern world. After all, it’s social scientists and experts who point out that society’s increasing loneliness and isolation of the marginalized are directly tied to the dissipation of organized religion.
The film convincingly shows why we can’t trust the solution to people like Pastor Jacob. But part of the reason people follow this world’s Jacobs is that he presents himself as a solution to a real problem that others are not addressing. If we don’t find a way to create healthier communities, then people will continue to follow the Jacobs and cover up their abuse regardless of the cost. And when one Jacob falls, they will simply follow another one.
“The Gates” should be lauded for using horror to grapple with real anxieties around faith rather than relying on lazy Hollywood tropes. If it had polished the script and been less reflexively tribal in its cultural analysis, the film could have broken down a lot more gates.
“The Gates” is playing now in theaters.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.